


Sometimes it hurts instead

by castielatlas



Category: The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Angst, Codependency, Depression, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, pain a lot of pain everything is angsty af, slight one-sided Minewt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-16
Updated: 2015-05-16
Packaged: 2018-03-30 21:36:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3952633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castielatlas/pseuds/castielatlas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alby was his crushed heart and blood, and Newt drowned all over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sometimes it hurts instead

 

[ ](http://www.hostingpics.net) 

 

 

He dreamed his limbs were torn from his body and then sewed back to it. He dreamed a mechanical hand –no, a _claw_ – ripped his heart out and crushed it. He screamed, reached out, but ivy was holding him back and he felt himself getting swallowed by the hole left in his chest as everything turned red. Blood flooded everything, and he drowned.

Newt jerked awake, his breath caught up in his throat and his heart beating furiously, panic shaking his whole body.

“Alby,” He thought out loud, his voice a bare whisper.

He reached out for the other side of the small bed, but only found emptiness. Reality slapped him with a striking force, making his stomach twist.

He wasn’t in the Glade. They had escaped. They had been rescued. Alby wasn’t there. Alby would never be there anymore. Alby was his crushed heart and blood, and Newt drowned all over again.

 

*

 

Minho found him by the toilet as he finished emptying his stomach.

Tired and throat sore, Newt wiped his mouth on his sleeve and backed away, resting his back against the wall and hunching on himself, desperately trying to stop thinking, to escape the mixed memories and subconscious fears still vivid in his mind.

He saw Minho’s dark shadow moving to sit next to him and a twisted part of him felt worse upon seeing him. It had nothing to do with the boy, really, Minho was one of his best friends; but his presence only served as a bitter reminder that if the circumstances were different, Minho wouldn’t be the one by his side right now.

Still, he felt grateful that Minho had the delicacy not to switch the lights on, revealing his probably red-rimmed eyes and wet cheeks.

Newt sighed, exhausted. His whole body hurt, pain acute in his limp, like fire burning the muscles, licking the bones. Common sense would blame the insane amount of pressure he had put on his injured leg during their escape, but Newt knew better. It was something deeper, an ache beyond physical, piercing through every layer he had worked so hard on to keep himself together what felt like forever ago.

The more he tried to stop thinking about it, the more it would sink within, cutting its way inside deeper and deeper. Heavy and stiff in his chest, it was a crushing feeling that hadn’t left him since they got out of the Maze –that he knew never would. He could feel it on him, smell it everywhere, see it through closed eyes; something _red_.

“There was only blood left.” He felt the words push painfully through his throat, rough and hollow, thoughts too loud to be kept unspoken. “They tore him apart until there was nothing left of him but blood.”

Cutting through the silence, his voice bounced off the wall of the tiny bathroom, waving through the heavy atmosphere, suffocating.

He looked up at the dark ceiling, eyes prickling. A laugh escaped his lips, chocked and more like a sob than anything else. “Shuck, he’s really gone, isn’t he?”

Newt was used to silence. Alby was never a talker, and as he spent most of his time by his side, Newt had learned that silence wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. The quiet moments they shared were comfortable, understanding ones. Words weren’t needed. Their silences were a solace.

This time through, the silence was deafening.

The Maze was hell. Newt hated it from his very core. It was fear and loss and hopelessness, grievers chasing them and killing them and keeping them trapped in their cage, like rats. The Maze was death, big walls and a failed jump. 

But the Maze was also the Glade. It was bonfires and friendship. It was brief but broad moments of joy; Minho hiding dirty socks under Gally’s pillow and the boy cursing at everyone because he couldn’t find the guilty, Clint and Jeff making handmade medicine with venomous plants and being covered in pimples for three weeks, Frypan cooking mushrooms he had found in the forest and getting everyone high.

It was Alby. Alby and the blurry memories of his breath hollowing over the tape of Newt’s neck in the morning, the undisclosed smile hidden under the fearlessness slipping out when they were alone, his arms grounding him when he woke up from night terrors and his voice soothing him during panic attacks.

He had always known that "happily ever after" was a faraway dream, but a tiny piece of him still had hoped, drunk by those small moments that maybe, they could have this, that there was still hope. It was laughable, how delusional he had been. _You are an optimist_ , newbies would tell him, perhaps because he always tried to cheer everyone up, played the nice cop to Alby’s bad one. _I’m an optimist who tried to kill himself_ , he would think, but never voice it, because there was no way he would dare to take away any hope the boys might have left.

Yet still, he had let himself think that he could be happy. When he was with Alby, it felt like he could be anything, really.

But those moments were gone, and with them the Maze, hope, dozen of his friends, and Alby. 

And he could have taken it. He could have taken the Grievers and the manipulation and the death of dozen of his friends -Nick and Ben and Adam and Jeff and even _Chuck_. He could have taken everything; but not Alby. Somewhere in the middle of everything, Alby had become Newt's makeshift gauge, the last straw determining to which extent Newt could be pushed, how much he could take before he broke. Alby grounded him, and as long as he was here, even if everything was twisted and nothing made sense, he could handle.

Even when Alby had been stung and a part of him had switched, when he had drawn away from his touch and words, Newt could still hold it together, because at least he was _alive_. Alby was the unstoppable force to Newt's immovable object.

But now Alby was gone, and there wasn’t anything to hold on to anymore. Alby was _dead_ and words weren’t enough to express how much it hurt. It was unbearable.

 _He was right. We should have stayed there_ , he thought, digging the heel of his hands in his eyes, the lump in his throat making it hard to even breathe. He could still see himself convincing Alby to take a chance outside, hear his voice saying that they would be okay. He had been the one to make them follow Thomas, to make them leave. It was him.

“It’s my fault.”

He could distantly hear Minho call his name, but the ringing in his ears made everything feel off. His heart was pounding like it was trying to beat its way out of his chest, echoing the tremor of the words drumming in his head, clouding everything else.

_I killed him._

Alby’s blood was all over him, sticky on his hands, sharp metal in his mouth. It flooded him and he was waking up all over again, except that this time the nightmare was his life, and he couldn’t escape it.

Emotions tore through this body with chaotic violence. 

It was different from the numbness that had driven him to jump off the walls. It was a violent kind of helplessness, one that burned both his body and soul with vivid flames, instead of burrying him under the embers. It felt as if he was endlessly being devoured by a Griever. 

And he couldn't _breathe_ , every gasp feeling like long, sharp claws in his chest, crawling deeper and deeper, tearing his lungs to shreds to get to his heart. Seizing his throat with both hands, Newt desperately gasped for air, oxygen a refuted solace.

It felt as if his entire body was shutting down –and maybe it was, maybe it was finally saying _enough_.

 _Make it stop_ , he silently pleaded. _I can’t do this anymore. I can’t. Alby, please, make it stop. It hurts, it hurts so much—_

His mind suddenly blanked as ice-cold water slammed against his body, shock making him gasp and finally, air filled his lungs again. He puffed messy breaths, his brain processing what just had happened, his body dizzy from such violent come back to reality. 

Regaining awareness of his surroundings, Newt watched Minho trow an empty bucket away before he knelt in front of him and took his face in his hands. He looked terrified.

“Minho,” Newt eventually breathed, unable to do anything else. 

“Shuck.” Relief flashed in Minho's eyes and he let go of his face to run a hand on his face. Then, he pointed a shaking finger at the blond boy. “Never do that again,” he ordered. “Ever.”

Body still frozen in shock, Newt simply nodded. A loud sigh escaped Minho’s lips and Newt’s gaze followed him as he dropped on the floor, as if suddenly drained of energy.

“You can’t do this to me, Newt,” he said, rubbing his hands on his face.

Minho buried his head between his knees and Newt listened to the boy trying to even his breath out, as if he had just been fighting to air, too. Without thinking about it, Newt synchronized his breath on his friend's, a mecanism he had learned a long time ago, when he used to be Runner. 

After a beat, Minho's respiration evened and he slightly raised his head so Newt could see his face, but the boy wouldn't look at him. When he finally spoke again, his voice was oddly rough.

“It sucks that he’s gone, I know,” he swallowed, as if the words hurt just as much as when Newt had had to say them. “But blaming yourself won’t bring him back, it won’t. If it did he would be back already, believe me.”

He huffed, a smile blooming on his lips, but it was broken, joyless. He brushed it off quickly.

“He’s gone and that means whatever klunk is coming is on us now, Newt. Alby left the others in our hands, he– he left you in mine. So you can’t fall apart,” Minho continued. “I can’t let you.”

Newt could hear the unsaid word hanging in the air, too heavy with meaning to be voiced; _Sorry_.

For the first time since they escaped the Maze, Newt looked at his friend –really looked at him. Minho looked _exhausted_. From the way his body was slumped against the wall to the dark circles under his eyes, how his voice was ragged and his blinks heavy. Newt could guess that Minho didn’t greed sleep either when the time had come. Maybe that was why he had been so quick to follow him. _I can’t let you fall apart_ , Minho had said. Suddenly, it hit Newt. It meant more than honoring Alby. _He can’t because he barely holds it together himself_.

Newt snorted, a damaged sound bursting out of him like blood gushing out of a wound. They had physically escaped the Maze, but their mind was still trapped, and they were just pathetic little boys haunted by their own memories and past. They were broken. Everything they had, everything they knew was tainted and gone.

“I loved him,” Newt said, and the words rolled off his tongue easily, almost casually, because _really, what’s the point now?_

He had never voiced it before, hadn’t need to. It was an unspoken truth. 

Newt didn’t remember when he had started to, exactly, but somehow it felt as if it had always been there. It had blossomed naturally, taking roots in their shared understanding and trust, growing patiently, deepening in spite of the bloody and poisoned soil.

Now, saying the words was the last thing making it real, and Newt felt utterly empty. The only fact, the sole certainty in his life was gone.  _There is no point._

“I know,” Minho said eventually.

Newt glanced up at him, watched as he pressed the pad of his thumb and index on his eyes and let out a dreary chuckle. “Shuck, Newt, I’ve always known.”

It made sense, Newt thought, Minho was their best friend. Through Alby and Newt were never ones for big display of affection in public, they didn't try to hide, either. It made sense that Minho knew. What didn’t, through, was that something like genuine hurt was hovering in the boy’s voice, as if the fact was painful for him. But Newt just couldn’t grasp the meaning behind it –part of him didn’t want to.

Silence washed over them once again, but this time Newt didn’t allow it to swallow him. Instead, he buried it. He buried the emotions in the hole left in his chest, a familiar numbness taking control of his body. They had to ready themselves for whatever was coming, and in order to do that, he had to bury Alby. He had to push down the grief and pain and misery so he could function, so he wouldn’t lose his mind or kill himself. It was a dangerous path, he knew it very well. He would surely snap at some point, just like he had in the Maze, and Alby wouldn't be here to catch him this time. But right now, he didn't care, couldn't bring himself to.

“So,” he finally spoke, discarding the silence. “What are we going to do now?”

Minho glanced back at him, eyes searching for brief seconds, and Newt almost thought that he would say something, that he knew what he was doing. But he didn't mention it, and Newt felt secretly thankful for it. “Shank, let me tell you,” he paused dramatically. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Newt let a small smile crack on his lips.

“Bloody wonderful,” the blond said. “Anyway, I think _live happily ever after_ is off the list.”

Minho scoffed at his words as he stood up, brushing off invisible dust on his pants.

“Let’s stick on staying alive.” He offered a hand to Newt. “That’s a good start.”

Newt stared at his hand, letting the words sink within him. “Yeah,” he eventually said, glancing up at his friend. “That’s a good start.”

So he took Minho’s hand and let his friend help him get on his feet.

 


End file.
